Sheridan turned that mechanical smile on me. “I’ll see you later for communion time.”
I’d been nervous and uneasy since getting out of my cell, but as she turned to leave, panic and fear of a new sort hit me. “Wait. What am I supposed to do?”
“Eat, of course.” She looked me over from head to toe. “Unless you’re worried about your weight. It’s up to you.”
She left me there in the silent cafeteria, with all those eyes staring. I’d stepped out of one hell and into another. I’d never felt so self-conscious in my life, put on display for these strangers and having my secrets revealed. Frantically, I tried to think of a course of action. Anything to get me away from the stares and one step closer to getting out of here and back to Adrian. Eat, Sheridan had said. How did I go about that? This wasn’t like at Amberwood, where the front office assigned veteran students to help new ones. In fact, Sheridan had gone out of her way to all but discourage them from helping me. It was a brilliant tactic, I supposed, one meant to make me desperately try for the others’ approval and perhaps see someone like Sheridan as my only “friend.”
Thinking through the psychology of the Alchemists calmed me down. Logic and figuring out puzzles were things I could deal with. Okay. If they wanted me to fend for myself, so be it. I looked away from the other detainees and walked steadily up to the window, where chef Baxter still wore a grimace. I stood in front of him expectantly, hoping that would be enough. It wasn’t.
“Um, excuse me,” I said softly. “May I have …” What meal had Sheridan said this was? I’d lost all track of time in solitary. “… some lunch?”
He grunted by way of response and turned away, doing something out of my sight. When he came back to me, he handed over a modestly filled tray.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from him. As I did, my hand lightly brushed one of his gloved ones. He exclaimed in surprise, and a look of distaste crossed his features. Gingerly, he removed the glove I’d touched, threw it away, and replaced it with a new one.
I gaped for a few moments in surprise and then turned away with my tray. I didn’t even attempt to engage with the others and instead sat down at one of the empty tables. Many of them continued staring at me, but some resumed their meals and whisperings. I tried not to think about if they were talking about me and instead focused on my meal. There was a small portion of spaghetti with red sauce that looked like it had come from a can, a banana, and a pint of 2 percent milk. Before coming here, I would never have touched any of it in my daily life. I would’ve lectured on the fat content of the milk and how bananas were one of the highest-sugar fruits. I would’ve questioned the meat quality and preservatives in the red sauce.
All of those hang-ups were gone now. This was food. Real food, not mushy, tasteless cereal. I ate the banana first, barely pausing to breathe, and had to slow myself so I didn’t finish the milk in one gulp. Something told me Baxter didn’t give seconds. I was more cautious with the spaghetti, if only because logic warned me my stomach might not react too well to the abrupt change in diet. My stomach disagreed and wanted me to cram it all in and lick the tray. After what I’d been eating these last few months, that spaghetti tasted like it had come from some gourmet restaurant in Italy. I was saved the temptation of eating it all when soft chimes suddenly sounded five minutes later. Like one person, all the other detainees stood up and carried their trays over to a large bin monitored by Addison. They emptied the trays of remaining food and then stacked them neatly on a nearby cart. I scurried up to do the same and then trailed behind the others as they left the cafeteria.
After Baxter’s reaction to touching my hand, I tried to save the other detainees the trouble of being near me and kept a respectful distance apart. We bottlenecked in the narrow hall, however, and the maneuvers some of them did to avoid bumping into me would’ve been comical in any other circumstances. Those not near me went out of their way to avoid eye contact and pretend I didn’t exist. Those forced to avoid contact fixed me with icy glares, and I was shocked to hear one whisper, “Slut.”
I’d braced myself for a lot of things and expected to be called any number of names, but that one caught me off guard. I was surprised by how much it stung.
I followed the crowd into a classroom and waited until all of them had sat down at desks, lest I choose the wrong one. When I finally selected an empty seat, the two people nearest me moved their desks away. They were probably twice my age, again giving it that twisted yet sad, comical quality. The suited Alchemist leading the class looked up sharply from his table when he heard the movement.
“Elsa, Stuart. Those aren’t where your desks go.”
Chagrined, the two of them slid their desks back to their neat rows as the Alchemist love of orderliness trumped its fear of evil. From the glares Elsa and Stuart gave me, though, it was clear they were now adding their reprimand to the list of sins I was guilty of.
The instructor’s name was Harrison, again making me wonder if that was a first or a last. He was an older Alchemist with thinning white hair and a nasally voice whom I soon learned was here to teach us about current affairs. For a moment, I was excited, thinking I’d get some glimpse of the outside world. It soon became clear to me that this was a highly specialized look at current affairs.
“What are we looking at?” he asked as a gruesome image of two girls with their throats ripped open appeared on a giant screen at the front of the class. Several hands went up, and he called on the one that had gone up first. “Emma?”
“Strigoi attack, sir.”
I’d known that and was more interested in Emma, my roommate. She was close to my age and sat so unnaturally straight in her desk that I was certain she was going to have back problems later on.
“Two girls killed outside of a nightclub in St. Petersburg,” Harrison confirmed. “Neither of them even twenty.” The image changed to another grisly scene, this of an older man who’d obviously been drained of blood. “Budapest.” Then another image. “Caracas.” Another still. “Nova Scotia.” He turned the projector off and began pacing in front of the classroom. “I wish I could tell you these were from the last year. Or even the last month. But I’m afraid that’s not true. Anyone want to hazard a guess when these were taken?”
Emma’s hand shot up. “Last week, sir?”
“Correct, Emma. Studies show that Strigoi attacks have not decreased since this time last year. There’s some evidence they might be increasing. Why do you think this is?”
“Because the guardians aren’t truly hunting them down as they should be?” That, again, was from Emma. Oh my God, I thought. I’m rooming with the Sydney Sage of re-education.
“That’s certainly one theory,” said Harrison. “Guardians are much more interested in protecting Moroi passively than actively seeking out Strigoi for the good of us all. In fact, when suggestions have been made to increase their numbers by recruiting at younger ages, the Moroi have selfishly declined. They apparently have enough to consider themselves safe and feel no need to help the rest of us.”
I had to bite my tongue. I knew for a fact that wasn’t true. The Moroi were suffering from low guardian numbers because there was a shortage of dhampirs. Dhampirs couldn’t reproduce with other dhampirs. They had been born in an age when humans and Moroi freely mixed, and now their race was continued by Moroi mixing with dhampirs, which always resulted in dhampir children. It was a genetic mystery even to the Alchemists. I knew from my friends that guardian ages were a hot topic right now, one that the Moroi queen, Vasilisa, was passionate about. She was fighting to keep dhampirs from becoming full-fledged guardians until they were eighteen, not out of selfishness, but because she thought they deserved a chance at adolescence before going out and risking their lives.